Ring Ding Buzz →
This is a blog about unified communications (voice, im, sms), open government, community involvement, and, of course, me, Mark Silverberg.
I wrote a WordPress plugin for the Phono SDK
It lets you put a full featured phone on your blog/website. Get the code and instructions at the GitHub repo above.
Be sure to check out http://blogs.voxeo.com/ for a mention of it too!
A screencast I created showing off a mashup of unified communications (Tropo) and an API for finding volunteer opportunities (allforgood.org). Tropo is a communications API provider that makes it dead simple to integrate any application with the voice/phone, SMS, instant messaging, and Twitter networks.
Real-Human Pronunciations By Phone with Tropo and Forvo
Problem: You’re at a foreign restaurant and your dining partner asks what “gruyere” is. OK, good; your time to shine. You inform them it’s a hard yellow cheese from cow’s milk. Swell. They think that dish sounds good… but ask you to pronounce the word for them. You don’t want to make a fool of yourself with the wrong French accent so you google “gruyere” and Wikipedia is the first result:[ɡʁyjɛʁ] and /ɡrɨˈjɛər/ … not too helpful.
Enter a voice mashup built with the Tropo Multi-Channel API that consumes data from Forvo, a speaking dictionary of sorts.
Solution: Text message “gruyere” to 202-618-0887 or pronounce@tropo.im
In under 70 lines of Ruby code, I’ve built a Tropo app to accept input via text, call you, play the sound file(s) of user-contributed pronunciations from Forvo, and, while you’re on the phone, text message you back a link to the sound file for future reference if you so choose.
Try it out and check out the open source code and quick start instructions on GitHub - it’s free. Comment, modify, and share it. The code has a lot of comments and if you get stuck, the Tropo developer documentation and other support channels are always helpful. You can also find me, other Tropo enthusiasts, and support engineers on #tropo (Freenode) at all hours.
Some Links: FREE CODE | SMS Screenshot | IM Screenshot
My Website / Let’s Chat
About
My name is Mark Silverberg. This is a blog about my work and take on relevant things. My website has more information about me.
Right now, I love working for Tropo (coding, testing, and chatting it up with developers) and going to school at the George Washington School of Business.
